… “hoppa hopper” (helicopter)

… using the stool to get to the counter height.

photos updated.

owen now wants privacy when he does his business and asks us to “go to the other room, please”.  we have to respect his request, so i’m secretly peeking around the corner to make sure he doesn’t pee on the floor.

poor dylan has the funniest balding head pattern.

i stopped in mid-shave to walk into the living room to find owen, pants around his ankles standing (not quite arms akimbo) with a huge smile on his face.  he had dragged his small travel potty out into the living room, taken his own pants off (this was a first) and then peed.

i inspected the floor near him and, sure enough, he had gotten ever y last drop into the small travel toilet.  not a single drop on the floor.  ah, youth.  i couldn’t do that if i tried.

i congratulated him, cleaned his toilet out and placed it back on the pile of things we’re taking on our trip.  and went back to shaving.  as i was rinsing my face, i heard from behind me, ‘i’m going to go poop!’ and then watched the blur of a two year old running towards his room.

by the time i left for work, owen was completely naked, sitting back on his travel potty with the look of a guy who had some serious things to, erm, work out.

it’s been another incredible month — full of wonder, shenanigans and trick or treating.

dylan: you have released your first giggle this month.  it starts with your mother or i being a total moron, making all sorts of silly faces and sound.  your face cracks a soul-melting, fully opened mouth smile and then two syllables of a laugh.  just two — feels like you need to follow through, but we’re close… we’re close.  next month.

according to your mother, you go to bed really easily — no rocking, singing or nursing required.  we just put you down when you look a bit tired and blammo, you’re out.

you already look up to your brother — literally.  as you play on your playmat your head will track the whirlwind that is owen (who is learning to ‘run fast’ from his room to the living room and back).  you watch somewhat stoically, you don’t smile or giggle.  you just observe and presumably cast judgment.  you do a lot of over your shoulder television watching.  you like soccer, and while i hope this will stick, it is most likely the result of the contrasting colors that entrances you, not the wonderful first touch of the world’s greatest players.

earlier in the month you showed us what it is like to have a conversation with you.  it goes like this:

PARENT or GRANDPARENT

dooo-bee-bee-boo-boo

DYLAN
(smiles)

goo!

then if we walk away, you go from smile to pout and then start crying until we return to your field of vision and you have a chance to actually finish the conversation we started.  it’s relentless, but sufferable because it is so cute.

you’re growing really fast and likely as a result of the growth spurt, your head cannot handle keeping your hair.  could also be stress related — living in this house can be pretty stressful. we’ve been trying to perfect the baby comb-over to little success so you tend to wear a lot of beanies or hats now.  hopefully you don’t stay bald forever (you won’t.)

and then finally, and this is something of a point of pride for me as a father of boys: you are the undisputed blowout king.  you can have them anytime, anywhere and without warning.  it usually begins with your face getting very red, somewhere in the middle it sounds like chunky milk sloshing around in a bottle and then it ends with an apocalyptic poo-mess and you smiling as if to say: yeah, mo-fo, i won.

happy third month.

owen: you learned your last name this month.  your mother posted about it.  it’s weird — we never taught the concept to you and i’m pretty sure sesame street never covered off on it either.  it sounds like ‘no-wan-ec’ — maybe you’re trying to tell us something, i’m not sure.

you’re also in the process of finding a pre-school.  i have to admit, we were pretty worried in how you’d integrate, as you have some funny, but cute things you do:

1) when you are being shy, you shove one (or both) hands into your mouth.  it is like you’re trying to eat your arm.  this results in a pool of drool and dribble.  you won’t talk to anyone during this.  just fist in your mouth silence.

2) you try to wait your turn in a crowd of kids.  this is seen most often at your toddler soccer class where, at the end, you get stamps.  thing is, you’re the only kid that waits — it’s a line of one.  it’s totally cute because you don’t want to cut in front of anyone, but everyone cuts in front of you.  you’re oblivious to this, but we’re proud of you for it.

thankfully at the preschool tours you integrate yourself pretty quickly.  we think you have a preference for kids a little older than you and not the same age.  you definitely like older chicks.

you’ve also hit the toddler milestone of doing your own somersaults and you love to paint.  and coinciding with what we know about you, you’re absolutley neat in painting.  you don’t get anything on the table or your clothes — only on the canvas.  some of your work is pretty cool too.

and, ahead of the curve (i think), your potty training is complete.  you sleep without diapers now and have had a few accidents overnight, which are our fault for feeding you liquids before bed.  but you wake up, stand on your bed and scream a the top of your lungs, ‘peeeeeeeee peeeeeeeee!’  this replaces our need for an alarm clock.  you have also learned how to pee on trees.  one of the downsides of taking you out of diapers is that we can’t be so lazy in our trip planning — we need to know where you can go at any given point.

love you little guys.

you are alive during a very historic moment.  polls have closed on the east coast and early presidential votes are in.  it is entirely too early to call, but any which way you look at it, this will end historically.  america will either:

1) elect its first black president

or

2) elect its first female vice president

in your home state of california, voters will decide whether or not to ban gay marriage constitutionally. those that know me know how i feel about both the presidential election and the state propositions so i won’t go into it here.

we’re going out to an election party — i will write your october letter late tonight or tomorrow.

welcome to history.

after an hour of playing on his playmat.  dylan decided it was time to take a little cat nap, on the floor, with the TV on and owen running around him like a crazy boy.

it’s the best!  what could be better than a holiday dedicated to going door to door begging for candy.  it’s the one day of the year that it’s acceptable behaviour to threaten complete strangers in the name of candy.

it was a perfect fall night, damp from a mid-day shower but warm and slightly breezy.  we met the mork-ulness clan and headed to belvedere street for trick-or-treating.  belvedere street is like something out of the movies.  on this beautiful tree lined street each house pulled out all the stops for halloween.  among all the classically halloween decorated houses, there were several haunted houses, a house giving out fresh kettle corn with one of those huge copper pots, the 1931’s frankenstein movie was being projected onto a sheet in the trees and this goregeous modern home (who apparently works for pixar) with dancing panda’s and tigersblasting music.  owen, who almost slept through trick-or-treating again, was wide-eyed and kept saying, “mama…dancing bears!”  it was an impressive spectacle. 

belvedere street was packed with like minded kids and parents, so owen rode on john’s shoulders the whole night with a sticky unwrapped lollipop in one hand and his pumpkin bucket in the other.  which kept hitting john in the face the whole night.  owen quickly learned saying “trick-or-treat” = candy.  after every house visit he’d come back crossing the pumpkin bucket across john’s face exclaiming “more candy!”  dylan was a sleepy monster in the back of the stroller the whole night.  we went back to the mork-ulness’s house for homemade pheasant soup and watched owen and lucia in sugar induced crazies hurl themselves off a table and into a bean bag.  it was wildly entertaining.

owen:  i’m a boy

owen pointing at me:  you’re a girl

owen pointing at himself:  owen chowanec

owen pointing at me:  mama chowanec

owen pointing at dylan:  dylan chowanec

how does he know “chowanec” is a name we all share?  i have know idea where he learned this.  grandma’s?  a week ago or so he said a word that sounded like “chowanec” (i don’t know what he was actually saying).  so i asked him if he could say “chowanec, owen chowanec” that’s your last name i said.  he proudly ran over to john and said “owen chowanec”  he even pronounced it well.  how he figured out that it’s a name we all share i have no idea.  where does he learn these things?

this is the sound you can make to get dylan to giggle.  well, the beginnings of a giggle.  he doesn’t follow through yet, but you definitely get something out of him for your efforts.  i’m sure it translates into ‘jackass’ if i spoke baby.